


The Coming of Hatter

by JessicaMDawn



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: Double Agents, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Family Issues, Growing Up, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaMDawn/pseuds/JessicaMDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Would you like a cup of tea?" How Hatter came to be the man he is, and the lives he lived along the way. Includes the original Mad Hatter and the birth of Mad March. Two-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. March

His first memory, like that of all born of Wonderland, is bursting forth into the light of life, crying his lungs out. He's cold and wet and uncomfortable. It's too bright and too loud and too everything and he hates it. He tries to turn instinctively toward his mother to hide in her arms, but he's too small and weak to do more than scream, hoping someone understands him.

This memory is faded and blurry, like an old photograph, but it is his and he holds onto it with all that he has. All of his memories of the time before he was six are precious and he protects them like his life depends on it….because, in a twisted sort of way….it does.

They named him David. It was an uncommon name, weird and unnatural. It was nothing like a Wonderland name.

He remembers his father was as tall as a mountain, or he was to David's small mind. The man was strong. David remembers he worked for the royal family – the Hearts. He remembers his mother as the person he got his looks from; his dark hair and eyes. She was always laughing.

His brother was named March. He was seven years old the day David was born. He had a sensible Wonderland name. He was tall like their father, with light colored hair and the darkest eyes David had ever seen. He remembers March like he remembers storms: either calming or violent.

He loved his family.

The world ended for the first time when he was six. He returned from a play date to find everything he'd ever known gone in an instant. The fire burned for three days without ceasing, like only some Wonderland fires do. He never saw his parents, but March told him the graves they dug held the bodies. He remembers March giving him juice in the shelter that night and saying things like "It's alright", "This doesn't mean a thing for us", and "We're still brothers. We'll stick together". He doesn't remember crying. He doesn't remember feeling sad at all.

That should've been the first clue something was wrong.

March was thirteen then. He got himself an apartment and took care of David all on his own. David never asked how. They ate breakfast and dinner together every day and March made him lunch before he left. It felt almost like a normal life. And he never worried.

Then he turned seven, and, as it is wont to do, the world shifted. His calm, sheltered life ended the day March crashed through the door holding a knife in his left hand and bleeding from the head and somewhere on his right arm. Or more precisely, everything changed the next morning.

He sat at the kitchen table, eating breakfast alone for the first time ever. March stepped in from the next room and sat down across from him like nothing was wrong. He stared at David until the food was gone from the table. His dark eyes pierced David's soul.

"Did you bandage me?" he asked, his voice cracking a bit with age. David nodded his head without a word, sipping on the juice box he'd pulled from the fridge that morning on his own. March touched his head and ran the fingers of his left hand along his right arm near the elbow. "You did good, brother. Very good."

It wasn't the first compliment he'd ever received, but this one seemed to hold more weight to it: like a secret.

"Come with me to work tomorrow," March half asked, half ordered.

So he did.

March's work was nothing like he'd ever imagined. There were guns involved, and knives, and other weapons David didn't recognize. They were all lined up in neat little rows in drawers with locks on them, or hung on hooks in the walls behind doors with pass codes. Everyone wore dark colored suits or black shirts and pants. No one talked but no one sat still either. David wasn't the only child in the room.

They set him up in the medical room, as March told them to. He was handed a roll of bandages and some antiseptic by a fat man in green shorts.

"You know how to use these," the man said. That was all the talking he did.

For four days, nothing happened in that room. He sat in a chair in the corner counting the bumps on the ceiling and tracing animals in the dirt on the floor from other people's shoes. Then a man came in, the tallest man he'd ever seen, with a knife wound on his shoulder. The fat man scoffed.

"Imbecile. Doesn't deserve to be in the Queen's service if he gets that bad a wound this late in the game."

David took his little roll of bandages, grabbed several medicines from the shelves along the far wall, and a stool so he could reach the wound, and bandaged the man up. With the wound bandaged, the bleeding stopped, and the worst of it over, David thought he'd done a good job. A woman with a diamond on the sleeves of her shirt came in when he was done and poured a blue liquid down the man's throat. He instantly calmed down and fell into a silent slumber.

When he gave her a strange look, the woman had smiled at David and waved the bottle in her hand at him. "Serenity," she said, holding a finger to her lips like it was a secret.

That was his first encounter with the Queen's bottled emotions. As all in Wonderland under the Heart's rule, going back almost a hundred years, David was familiar with the emotions that served as most of the currency in the world. He'd heard of it, but he'd never tasted it, any of it. When he asked March about it that night over dinner, his brother simply said "Why do you think Ma was so happy all the time?" like it was the simplest answer and David should've known that.

It was the last dinner the brothers ate together for eight years. In fact, David hardly saw the apartment once a week, then once a month. He lived at the base where the Queen's assassins and spies held their base of operations. He started out in the medical room and stayed there for a little over a year. But, like most people in Wonderland, he was curious to a fault. He wandered and found himself in the shooting range.

The sound of the bullets startled him, but only for a few moments. The smile that lit March's face when he found David there, hours later, holding a hand gun and shooting targets, was as bright as the moon and as crooked as broken glass.

Three years later and David liked to boast he's mostly self taught, because it's true and he's the only eleven year old who can shoot a fly at thirty meters. He can take apart pretty much any gun in the compound, mix it with the parts from two other guns, and put them all back together at the same time without making a single mistake. His eyes don't close when he shoots, and March told him that was good.

"But I can still get you with a knife any day of the week, brother," March said within the same breath, so David isn't sure how to take it, but nothing really phases him anyway; not the blood on the assassins' weapons or the wounds on a victim. "In fact….I think we should start you on combat training. Enough of this long range, safety zone stuff. You're old enough."

March was eighteen now and everyone called him 'Mad March'. David isn't sure when they started calling him that, but he knows he noticed it about a year ago.

For the record: David is crap at hand to hand combat.

All his knowledge is useless when he's faced with a man triple his size and over twice his age. He's not swift enough to punch or kick a single foe, no matter how many hours of extra training he's put through a day. He was taken off guns completely and set to total fight training at all times. Four months in, he hadn't hit a mouse let alone a man. Only the punching bag knew his fist, and he avoided it because he was tired of explaining to the older men why it was broken or split open or whatever after he used it, when he didn't have the answer. David couldn't explain it to anyone, but in every fight, as soon as he punched and missed and his opponent grabbed his right hand or wrist…he hit the floor.

March was angry at David's failure. David couldn't find the bitterness inside himself.

"Four months, David!" March shouted that night in the medical room, after David had been treated for the latest beating he'd taken in training. "What's the matter with you?"

For once, David felt a stirring deep in his gut. It was nearing midnight and he hadn't eaten or drank anything in twelve hours. He was tired and he hurt and it wasn't his fault he couldn't fight. He was trying his hardest.

"I do my best, March," he contended in a calm voice. "If that's not enough-"

"That is not your best!" March interrupted. They were walking toward David's 'bedroom.' "If that was your best, then we're not brothers anymore!"

The feeling that shot through David was sudden and violent. He didn't know what it was, he didn't have a name for the feeling. It may have been anger, or hurt, or even surprise or excitement. All he knew was that in the next moment, he had flipped around to face March and landed a strong right hook to March's chest, as high as he could reach.

The look of shock across March's face was worth every beating David had received in practice. Then his brother hit the floor fifteen feet away with a nearly blood curdling shout of pain. Panic gripped David and he rushed to kneel by March's side. The medic on duty at the time ran out and over to the two brothers. They tore back March's shirt, revealing the red mark on his chest. Within moments, purples, blues, and yellows were spreading across March's tanned skin, even leaving the left side of his body to take over the right as well.

Horror settled in David's stomach. "I'm so sorry, March!" he gushed, placing his little hands on his brother's right shoulder, so he wouldn't be in the medic's way as he examined the problem.

"The preliminary diagnosis is pretty bad, Mad. It seems you've broken at least three ribs and several of your blood veins are in serious trouble. I'm pretty sure your breast plate is at least cracked, if not worse. An inch further up and your heart may have been damaged," the medic announced in a grave tone.

March began to shake, then chuckle, and then full out chortle. He winced when it moved his broken ribs, but didn't stop his laughter. March lifted a shaking hand and cupped David's face almost tenderly.

"Now that's what I'm talking about," he managed before his eyes rolled back in his head and his hand hit the ground.

It took over a month before March was good to work again, with the help of Wonderland medicine and the Queen's bottled emotions. News traveled fast about how Little David did it, and David found himself in a world of recognition he didn't want.

The first thing March did when he was released from the hospital was take David to lunch. From then on, David did pretty much anything March asked of him. He trained for hand to hand combat and learned that while he could do unthinkable damage with his right fist, the same did not apply for his left and if anyone so much as pinched anything from his right wrist to his fingertips he was just as useless in a fight as a newborn Cheshire cat.

But March gave that broken glass grin every time David won a fight. And he was put back on guns.

He was shot by a rouge member of the team when he was twelve. March visited him once in the hospital, right after it happened. He saw the bandages wrapped around his little brother's waist and left the room. David didn't see him until he was released a week later and March came to pick him up.

That was when he began to notice how March had changed. March used to look out for him, now he didn't. It was one of the older assassins who gave David his first piece of body armor. March used to have a warm laugh, but now it sounded sinister. He was cold, indifferent, and sometimes cruel. He fought weaker men and showed no mercy. He rarely talked to anyone weaker than him, and then not to anyone at all unless he had to, not even David.

On a job when David was thirteen, March tracked a member of the Resistance down and slit the man's throat while he begged for mercy. David was certain his brother did it purposefully in a way that got the man's blood on his hands. He watched March with uncertainty for the first time ever in his life.

"But we were supposed to bring him back alive," another tracker spoke up from behind David.

It was when March killed that teammate without a second glance that David realized the truth.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat…," March muttered as he sat by the body of their former comrade, "How I wonder what you're at."

It wasn't just a code name: March really was Mad.


	2. Hatter

There are times in a person's life when they meet certain people who will change them forever. Sometimes this change is not good. Sometimes it's really really bad. But other times this change is the best you could ever hope for. And then there are the times where you aren't sure if you should be happy you met them or insanely pissed off.

David was on his first solo job. He was fourteen and armed to the teeth. His target was a man who supposedly smuggled goods to the Resistance. His name was Valor.

He found Valor in one of the older abandoned buildings of the city. He was scruffy, looked like he hadn't bathed in over a month, and David wondered how this man was a threat to anyone. However, he was ordered to kill him, so he did; shot him with a long range gun down a hallway only twenty feet long. Valor hit the wall and went down with barely a sound.

Just as he lowered his gun, clapping sounded from behind him. David flipped to face the new enemy and pointed his gun. The end of the gun touched the man's green vest and he stopped clapping, simply holding his hands up near his head. He had scraggly white hair that poked out to the sides from underneath a ludicrously colored top hat.

"Good job," the man complimented him. He nodded to the wall to his left. "Put the gun down and take a seat."

David told himself it was the authority in the man's voice that made him do it, but he did it none the less. The man knelt before him, examining his face.

"How long?" he asked.

"How long what?" David countered.

"How long have you been on the Queen's bottled lifestyle? And tell the truth," he asked like he was commenting on the weather.

David bristled a bit. "I don't drink that stuff. Just because I work for the Queen doesn't mean I drink my emotions." Actually, David didn't think he had too many emotions to feel, and maybe that was why he didn't drink them: he was afraid of what it would be like to feel something besides the lingering peace that pervaded his life.

The strange man tilted his head a bit to the right, his eyes never leaving David's face. "Then I suppose…your brother," he stated almost cautiously, "is the one feeding it to you, under the radar. Such a terrible thing to do to family…"

"Brother?" David asked tensely, trying not to give away that the mad man before him had guessed right. Was he was spy? For who?

Instead of answering, the man pushed himself to his feet and took two steps back down the hall where he'd come from. "I suppose that will have to be remedied, then." He turned to face David again. "Try not to drink anything tonight. At least nothing anyone else gives you. If you believe me then, come calling for Hatter at the Tea House in the morning."

David frowned. "Believe you? Believe what?" he called, even as the strange man vanished around the corner. David jumped up and ran around the corner after him, but the man was gone, as was typical of Wonderland. You can never find someone when you really need to, or that was David's idea at least. "He's mad," he told himself. "Totally mad, like March."

The thought of his brother brought back in stark life what the man had told him. Could March be slipping him emotions? Why? Which ones? Since when? He'd never noticed a change in his behavior, never felt a spike of some emotion.

No. Obviously the man was simply mad and that was all there was to it.

Still, David found himself almost six hours later having not drank even a drop of water to quench his thirst. March handed him a bottle of water when he got back from his own job that night, but David poured it down the drain in the men's room, rinsed it out, and refilled it with tap water. He had no idea why he was even considering that his own brother would slip him some sort of emotion, but his natural Wonderland curiosity had him dying to find out the truth. For the first time, he noticed March watching him as he drank the water, and it only made what the man in the hallway – Hatter – said seem more plausible.

March ordered him to bed early that night and David almost told him no, but kept silent and did as he was told. There was a quivering in his body, a shaking of his core. His insides felt like they were moving. Lying in bed, David couldn't shut his eyes. Every time he blinked he saw the faces of the people he'd killed, the crooked glass smile of March's, the fire that took his parents from him. He was beginning to panic. He'd never panicked before, but he'd seen some of the other younger kids panic when they made their first kill or they were wounded or scared. He'd tried to imagine what panic felt like at the time, and now he knew.

He had to get out of here.

Eight years of near constant training were probably the only reason he got out of the base and through the city without being caught. He found the Tea House easily: it was a well known place, where everyone came to buy their 'Tea', their bottled emotions. David had never been to it before. It was late at night and no one was in the front room, but David couldn't wait until morning to call. He tried the handles of every door he could find. Any that didn't open, he knocked. Then he turned a handle and the door opened.

Inside was a strange room. It was white with lots of light that made everything seem brighter. Half of the room was the gray stone of the rest of the building, half of the room was covered in lush green grass. There was a table in the middle of the grass, covered in a table cloth as ludicrous as Hatter's top hat had been. There were twelve seats at the table, and each one had a cup placed in front of it, and there were several tea pots along the center of the table with steam coming out, indicating freshly brewed tea.

Only one seat was occupied and it wasn't facing him. David knew it was Hatter because of the tall hat protruding over the back of the purple chair.

"Would you like a cup of tea, David?" the man asked jovially.

"H-how did you-" David stuttered out. He felt all out of sorts with himself and shaky.

The purple chair spun, surprising David who didn't think a chair like that could turn at all, and David was brought face to face with the man from the hallway once more. "You're a special one, David," he practically crowed, standing while holding a cup of tea halfway to his lips. "I knew you'd listen to me, all that obedience and whatnot spinning through your veins, and that unmatched curiosity swirling about your head." He took a long, loud sip of his tea and turned to set the cup on the table before motioning grandly for David to come to him. "Come come, haven't got all day – or I suppose we do, but either way, I never liked that saying anyhow. Tell me how you're feeling."

David took one hesitant step forward, and then he practically ran the rest of the space between him and Hatter. "I'm just-" he stopped abruptly. "I feel-" he stopped again.

Hatter gazed at him in an understanding way. "How about this? What is the last thing you remember feeling? And we'll build from there."

David's mind flashed back to when he was six and watching the fire consume his house. His parents were dead. His toys and clothes and books and everything were destroyed and his parents had burned with them. He was alone with March. He was an orphan. He'd lost his family; mother, father.

Grief consumed him. The tears sprung to his eyes and all strength left his legs. He dropped to the ground, laying almost on his stomach in the grass, and held the blades between his fingers in a terrible grip. Sobs ripped through him painfully and he couldn't stop, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop.

"M-m-m-mo….," he half-breathed out, but couldn't finish. "F-fa-" he cut himself off with another sob that ended in a pitiful whine.

Hatter was at his side, a hand on his back rubbing up and down comfortingly, while his other gently pushed David's hair behind his ear so Hatter could see his face better. For some time, he just sat there and let David cry, rubbing his back comfortingly in silence. When the sobs were nearly gone, he spoke up.

"How about some tea?"

David drank probably his own body weight in teas of all kinds, and then fell asleep on Hatter's couch. When he woke up, he had to pee really bad, and he felt as bad as a rejected Jubjub bird, what with his head pounding and his body aching and his heart screaming and all. After breakfast with Hatter at his strange tea covered table, David came to the decision that would alter his fate.

"I'm not going back there. I'm staying with you."

Hatter took his declaration in stride, accepting him and making his own declaration. "And I will keep and teach you as long as you stay in all that I know; especially my love for tea."

Hatter, it turned out, was truly quite mad, just as David thought him to be. But it was in a different sort of mad manner than March turned out to be. David liked Hatter's madness. He once told Hatter he was mad and Hatter responded "That may be so, but I'll let you in on a secret I was told long ago by a girl named Alice. All the best people are. And you, David, are as mad as any Hatter."

Hatter loved David's name and he used it as often as he could when they were alone. However mad he may be, Hatter was also devious and scheming. He called David only 'Tea' when they were among strangers, even strangers Hatter had known for years, like Dodo, who visited the Tea House every other Tuesday to let Hatter know how the Resistance was going.

That's another thing David learned shortly after coming to live with Hatter: Hatter was in league with the Resistance. He took David with him wherever he went, and many of those places were Resistance houses. David met refugees and made connections with those in the underground through his new mentor. He learned the art of giving bribes, and even how to accept them if the situation arose. Hatter technically worked for the Queen, but he never met the woman. He accepted her "Teas" and sold them and ran the Tea House, but that was as far as they went.

When they sat together after dinner, Hatter giving David another lesson on the proper way of making real tea, he told David that he worked with the Resistance because he missed the old days. He missed the days where he was a hatter and was free to make hats all day long to his heart's content. Above all else, even tea, Hatter loved making hats. He made David all manner of hats and David wore them no matter how absurd they were, because Hatter gave David back his soul and he would do anything for the older man.

It was through Hatter that David learned of the Alice of Legend, a little girl who caused the last revolution and gave Wonderland to the knights, who ruled it for a thousand years. Then David would protest that there was no way Hatter could have known that Alice, because no one, not even those of Wonderland, lived to be that old.

And Hatter would give him a secretive smile, his eyes would twinkle, and he'd say "There is always a way, David. Remember that."

David loved Hatter's clothes. He'd lived for eight years around men and women who wore all black and dark colors, and were ready for murder at any time. He'd lived around Suits. Hatter wore long yellow jackets with pink bow ties and white shirts with polka dotted pants and a green hat. He had suits of every color in every style for every occasion. He made David jackets of all lengths from any fabric he got his hands on. And while Hatter had a strange style, he made sure he looked his best when he left for any place, even if that place were the breakfast table.

David mixed Hatter's style with that of his father and that of the Suits and came up with the look he'd wear for the rest of his life: strangely designed shirts, dark pants, a badly tied tie of any color, and a matching hat and jacket. Had to have the jacket. Had to have the hat. No outfit was complete without them.

They nearly got caught helping the Resistance by the Suits when David was seventeen. Once safe back in the Tea House and with Hatter talking his way out of any suspicion, Hatter sat David down at his strange, tea covered table and settled him with the most serious look David had ever seen on Hatter's face.

"Red King forbid it, but David…if you ever get caught by the Queen of Hearts, don't tell them anything. They may hurt you for keeping silent, but they will kill you if you talk, and they will kill anyone you mention too."

David nodded. "I know. I used to work for them," he reminded the Mad Hatter.

Hatter nodded his head too in mimic of David. "Let me tell you a riddle, David," he began in a light voice, leaning back in his chair. "It's helped me out of many a sticky situation. If you ever get caught, I think you must use it against the Queen's men. Think of the look on their faces," he mused gleefully. He shook his head to clear it and picked up a cup of tea. "It was an argument my friend Hare and I had many a years ago, before Alice came to Wonderland."

He stopped and David sat silently, waiting. Hatter did this often: starting a conversation and then going off in his own mind. David had learned to just wait it out, because eventually the old coot would remember he'd been talking.

After only a few seconds, Hatter sat up straighter in his chair and blinked hard. Without preamble he said, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

"Huh?" David let out, his eyebrows lifting.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Hatter repeated easily, with a blissful smile and an easy nod of his head. "The clockwork's not ticking properly. There must be crumbs in the butter."

"That doesn't make any sense," David protested half-heartedly.

Hatter grinned. "Why, David, that is exactly the point. If you confuse yourself, you confuse your captors all the more."

David had hoped he never had to use the Hatter's riddles. He should've known hoping doesn't do you any good.

The world ended for the second time when David was eighteen.

They hadn't even gone anywhere. David and Hatter were at Hatter's house, next to the Tea House, enjoying a simple day off. David was making the tea that day, proving to Hatter he could make it just as well as Hatter could.

"My dear boy, I do believe you are right!" Hatter exclaimed after his first sip.

David smiled widely. He'd done it!

"If ever I retire," Hatter continued jovially, "You must become my replacement! You are simply amazing!"

This really had nothing to do with David making good tea, since Hatter's profession was in the selling of emotions, and while they were called 'Teas' by some, it was nothing similar at all.

Then the door burst open and in marched Mad March, in a dark blue suit with a white undershirt. David had barely turned to face the door when a knife went whizzing past his left ear. He heard the knife slice through cloth and skin, the grunt of pain from Hatter's mouth, and the shattering of porcelain and the splashing of tea on the ground. David spun back around in time to see Hatter hit the grass floor.

"No," he breathed out, and he felt his heart crack in a way he had not felt since the day he remembered to feel.

Hatter left the knife in his chest even as he made to stand back up again, his eyes wide with pain and effort. Already his pink shirt was turning dark with blood. A short 'bang!' shot through the room and David flinched even as Hatter's body shook and more blood shot from his chest into his shirt, nearer his heart this time. David watched in mute horror as Hatter fell back to the ground…and didn't get back up.

For several seconds no one moved and there was barely a breath in the air. Then March came to stand by David's side. He held the gun in his right hand, and he wrapped his left hand around David's left arm.

"David, let's go," he said calmly, his voice holding an accent it didn't have four years ago. "The Resistance swine is dead, so you can come back to the Suits with me now."

He tugged on David's arm a bit, turning his brother around, and began walking him towards the door. David felt numb. So many emotions were swirling under his skin that he couldn't focus on one single one or he'd go mad.

Mad.

Mad like March.

Mad like Hatter.

"That may be so, but I'll let you in on a secret I was told long ago by a girl named Alice. All the best people are. And you, David, are as mad as any Hatter."

Fire erupted in David's body, like the fire that consumed his family. Even March was taken in that fire, he realized. Or perhaps he'd been gone before the blaze took over. But now it burnt in David's heart, his soul, consuming him and drowning him like perhaps only a Wonderland fire could do.

"March!" he shouted, twisting in his brother's grip and throwing his right fist towards his older brother's face as hard as he could. It connected solidly, since March hadn't known it was coming, and David almost took pleasure in the cracking and snapping he both heard and felt in his brother's face.

March went tumbling backwards over his own feet and hit the ground hard enough to dent the floor. His face was crumpled and disfigured, but he was still staring at David in shock. "W-why…D-dav-vid?" he managed.

David grabbed March's gun from his right hand and pointed it at his brother's chest. He glared harder than he could ever remember glaring, the fire still burning him through. "My name isn't David, Mad March," he spat the name out. "It's Hatter. And we aren't brothers anymore."

Without another second's waste, David emptied the rest of the bullets into March's chest.

He dragged the body out of the Tea House and dropped it over the side of the walkway, then cleaned up the trail before going back to Hatter's room. He stopped breathing again at the sight of his mentor's body still lying by the table, broken tea cup on the side. David stepped slowly, almost hesitantly over to Hatter's body and fell to his knees at his side.

The shadows were already cold. His fingers brushed Hatter's cooling cheek and recoiled, finding rest instead on the lapels of Hatter's purple jacket. The warmth of tears burned streaks down David's cheeks.

"Hatter," he half-sobbed out. "I'm sorry." He bowed his head, his fingers clenching in the smooth fabric beneath his fingers. "I'm so sorry." He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself even as the tears multiplied and his face turned red. "You were like a father to me…You were Mad, the Mad Hatter…but you were the best." David rested his forehead on Hatter's left shoulder, his tears catching in the threads there. "You were the best."

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there like that, crying into Hatter's cold shoulder. He stayed until all his tears were gone, putting out the fire that had threatened to destroy him from the inside. When he finally pulled away, David was dead. A new Hatter was in his place. And like the old Hatter, this new one would help the Resistance: because he knew how the Teas were wrong and he knew how the Queen was destroying Wonderland, and because he knew the Mad Hatter would be so happy to see Wonderland the way it had been before…when Alice of Legend fell through the Looking Glass and Hatter made hats for the royal family. When people were free.

He made a deal with the Queen of Hearts and took up the Mad Hatter's place amongst the Resistance. The Queen trusted him because he was an old Suit. The Resistance trusted him because of the old Hatter. He smuggled food and artifacts to the Great Library. He sold Teas to the poor, deluded people of Wonderland. He helped cause mischief for the raiding parties heading to or from the Looking Glass. He helped anyone who asked, but only gave half an ear to the Suits and the Queen. He played both sides of the court.

And he never wanted for much more than compliance from his contacts, save for a good hat or a nice jacket, until that day almost four years later…when a Rat brought him a girl in a wet dress named Alice, and he thought she was the most beautiful girl in any world.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"


End file.
